Photo-Rific Opporbilities

After her initial disgust with me, Susan agreed that we cannot be without a camera. So she looked through the sales material in today's paper and found a $100.00 Canon that will get us by.


Here is the first picture I took with it.

So we are back in the visual realm of the Interweb.


I bought my first digital camera about twelve years ago. It was a Canon with a 1 Mega pixel resolution. It cost about $550.00 and that was with an employee discount through the store where I had a friend by it.


Today's camera cost $89.99 plus $12.00 for a 4 Meg SD card. It's resolution is 16 Mega pixels and it takes video.


There was a faux pas in the transaction. I had to take the camera back to the store because I could not get it to take any pictures. The lens did not appear to be connected to the view screen. They ended up giving us the demo model and $10.00 back.

Good News, Bad news

The Good News is that we had a very busy morning of accomplishing stuff followed by an afternoon of not so much.


I was up bright and early to take part in our Annual Neighborhood Dump Day. The Emerson-Garfield Neighborhood Committee, of which I am a part, does a Clean Up Day every Spring. The City provides these giant dumpsters and people show up and get to unload their crap for free. Our committee pays for it through grants we get through the city for dump passes and Spring Clean Up days. 


As usual, it was a busy day and we filled eight dumpsters. I think each dumpster is 30 yards, which doesn't sound like much. But these things are bigger than a dump truck...maybe bigger than two dump trucks...and we filled eight of them.


The Bad News is that I have no pictures to show of the event. At some point during the day, I lost my camera. I was up on top of a dumpster, jumping up and down to compress the load of yard waste and I'm pretty sure that is where I lost it. 


I realized it pretty quick because I was taking a lot of pictures. I climbed back up on the load and looked around but it was gone.


DAMMIT!


I think I paid about $180.00 for that camera and now I will need to get another. I cannot go on without a camera. That is like...um...me without a camera!


DAMMIT!


I would also like to announce the finish of our new mini sub-deck around the hot tub. Now we have reduced substantially the risk of falling in the hole around the hottub by removing the hole and putting in its place a new mini sub-deck. Aren't you paying attention?


DAMMIT!

Dear Scumbag,

I walked out of the house this morning and saw that you had visited us over the night.

You left the car door of Susan's Honda open when you were finished with your ransacking, which I find most discourteous. It was good that the battery didn't get drained from having the dome light on all night.

I hope you were able to find what you were after. The two pairs of prescription sunglasses you took will serve you well, providing they match your prescription, which I doubt.

I commend you on your attention to detail. You managed to take the items that would screw Susan over the most. She'll have to spend about three hundred dollars to replace those glasses.

You are a parasite of the worst order. You have no value to society and you are the reason I support the death penalty. Preferably, a slow, cruel painful death penalty.

I am using all my will power to keep from unleashing a hail of obscenity laced insults upon your worthless waste of skin self. But that would require your ability to read from the computer you stole for it to be effective.

So go forth and have a good life. My only solace is the knowledge that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, you cowardly low-life fuck-wad piece of shit.

Oops! Somehow the obscenity got out!

The First Weekend of Summer

Wow! What a weekend!!!

I'm not sure where to start other than to say that we are at the tail end of a fabulous weekend.

The weather was great. It was warm yesterday (Saturday) but today was stellar. My little weather station says it got up to 104 degrees today. I would say it was more like 80ish. Officially, it was 79. In any event, it was a fabulous day. And we did fabulous things with beautiful people in interesting places.

I guess let's start at Friday. There was supposed to be a little gathering at the Hub Tavern on Friday but the food portion of the gathering never materialized. Fortunately, the beer portion of the event was working fine.

I must make a comment concerning the hops. On Saturday, I marked a spot on a post to measure the growth of this one particular shoot on the Sterling plant. When I measured it again on Sunday, it had grown four and a half inches. That was at noon. I measured it again at 6, and it had grown another inch and a half. I really think you can just sit out there and watch it grow.

That one shoot is well over ten inches from where it was Saturday. There are about se7en other shoots coming out of this one root and they are all doing fine.
The Hallertau is doing great as well. I snipped off over 20 small shoots on it on Sunday to allow the five or six big ones the room and resources to grow baby grow.

Susan has officially finished the wall papering of the entryway. I think I can make a case that this has been going on for two years.

The above pictures show her placing the final historic piece of wall paper.

Now we have to begin cleaning the house. It has been a while since we have really really cleaned the house. We've just been making too much of a mess. Now, the mess making is over for a while and it is time to clean.

Does anybody know where the vacuum is?

The Suck of Social Networking

There is soooooo much life going on, who has time to Blog?! I have avoided all Social Networking platforms like the plague but find myself slowly getting sucked in to it. I now have a presence on Facebook but there's not much there. I think I'll add a link about this Blog and that will be my conduit into the world of Soshing.

In the meantime, I have a few projects to do today and I shall bring this post along for the ride.

12 Noon: It is twelve noon and we have just arrived home from church. Susan has some wall papering to do. She is hoping to finish the hall project today. I am waaaaay behind in what I'm doing in the hall. Partly because I'm a slacker and partly because new little things pop up. The latest thing to pop is a small seam around the doors where I am replacing trim.

I have paint to remove that I just didn't think about. So I am going to stop typing and get downstairs and get to work. Pictures to follow.

1:00PM Update: This is the one o'clock update. Unfortunately it is 1:19 and that's about how I expect this to go.

Here are some pictures.

The most exciting news to report is the discovery of a major find. After cleaning all the coats out of the hall closet, I stumbled across a winter parka I forgot I had. In it, I found my alternate car keys that I lost about two years ago. I knew I had left them in a winter jacket of some type. At least, I had that inkling of a thought.

 As soon as I saw the coat, I started rummaging through the pockets and felt the keys almost immediately. I'm such a dumbass! But now I'm a happy dumbass.

The important thing is that my remote door lock has pretty much had it. It had gone through the ringer and then some. The one on my alternate keychain is as pristine as the day the car was purchased.

3:00PM Report: This is the 3:26 report. Here am some mo' pichurs.

These pictures are of Susan working, who never gets enough credit here in the ol'Blog for here tasks. The last picture shows the last wall to be papered in this project. It doesn't feel like it, but that's a landmark. Well, it's not a landmark yet because she hasn't finished it. It's no major blow if she doesn't finish. Other than to her ego.

My closet door project is coming along. I'm putting down a final stain tomorrow after the wood putty has had a good chance to dry.

In the meantime, I am scraping the kitchen door frame. We're getting close to calling it a day. We have a nice roast to put on the barbeque rotisserie tonight. I am looking forward to that.

5:00 PM Edition: This is Stan checking in for the 5:00 Edition at 11:18PM. What can I tell you. I got involved in stuff.


I'm not even going to get caught up. I'm just going to hit publish and continue with life. Cuz there's a lot of it going on...almost everywhere you look.

Repair Day

We have three water heaters.

It's not that we really really really like hot water (which we do). Nor are we lovers of foolish waste, consuming mass quantities of natural resources for no apparent reason (which we are).

The house was formerly a group home and so they required a steady flow of hot water to keep everyone clean and happy.
We have only been operating on two water heaters. There is the one main water heater which used to be set up in tandem and then there is another water hater which runs the laundry primarily.

A while back I noticed the carpet in the basement was a tad dampish.

Closer investigation revealed a leaking water heater. I decided it was time to pull it out and replace it with the one we disconnected years ago in anticipation of just such a need.

So I made note of how it was connected to the water lines, and where the electrical connection was.

Then it was just a matter of draining the old tank, moving it out of the way and replacing all the fittings and wires onto the reserve tank. Simple!

"Ha!", I say unto thee, "Ha!"

I connected the hose to the drain outlet and had a great deal of difficulty getting any water to come out. I eventually had to call my Emergency Help Friend Jerry (E.H.F.) to give me some advice.

He suggested I try sticking a coat hanger up the valve as it is probably caked thick with calcium from our hard water.

I wanted to get everything back up and running before Susan returned from church where she was helping prepare Meals on Wheels for Easter Sunday. So I managed to move the full water heater out of the way and proceeded in an orderly fashion to efficiently and correctly reattach that which I had detached.

That all went well and we currently have hot water.

I man handled the old water heater into the laundry room and over to the proximity of the floor drain. After a good deal of struggle and toil, I managed to fish a coat hanger into the faucet outlet and, sure enough, got a stream of water draining from the tank, along with a great deal of calcium chips. It took a good long time and I had to occasionally adjust my wire in and out to get an new stream going.

The tank is now drained and waiting for a strong friend to stop by in the future who I can wrangle into helping my lift this bitch out of the basement.

So for now, I'm pretty pleased with myself and am ready to have a beer as a reward.

April Fools Post

It's Sunday and we have just returned from a busy morning at church. Susan is co-Chair of the Committee to Feed People on Sundays Committee and we had to feed some people today.

It's a very complicated algorithm but on months with five Sundays in them, we have a potluck after the service on the fifth Sunday. Today is the first Sunday and April Fools to boot so we moved it to today.

So that took up most of our morning. Now we are home and have a few hours to do as we please.

Not so for Susan though, as she has to work at the Arena tonight for a continuing Hockey Playoff Game. This is the time of year where she roots from them to lose.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. It rainy out so there's not a lot of planned outdoor activity. It was so nice last Sunday and then followed by a week of rain. I think we had one of the wettest March's on record.

I'll report back in a little bit and update any exciting or even less than exciting progress I have made on anything.
4:48PM: It is a windy day but it has turned into a sunny day. It's still pretty cold with the wind.

I was out in the yard and came across a positive sign of Spring. Hops!

Both vines are starting to produce shoots. I'm going to have to cut back to three shoots a column. Otherwise they are really thick and they grow slower.

9:24PM: I been doing some odd jobs around the house but for the most part, it has been a lazy day.

I took a nice twilight picture of the house that I like.

I also got this shot with the house and the moon. I love the house and the moon shots. I have lots of them.

I guess that's it for today. Someday soon, I'll talk about the house.